Whichever passage in the synoptics you read it in, Christ's call to people to take up their cross and follow him is a stark commandment. Here is the passage in Luke's gospel:
23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his crossdaily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? 26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamedwhen he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God." (Luke 9:23-27)
Christ is here murdering our self-justifications: what God wants from us is to try our best; it is our heart that counts; I keep the whole law!; and the ways in general that we compartmentalize our lives. Christ's call is total. There is no equivocation here. He does not stutter and he is not apologetic about what he asks. There is no hedging. Cross. Everyday. Unashamed.
Part of me reads this and gets excited; part of me reads this and is filled with dread. I want so badly to lay down my life for Christ, to put sin to death in my life, to live for his glory, and the prospects of a life lived in service to those ends is exciting. I dread this passage because I am so terrible at doing all of those things. Most days I think nothing of the cross, nothing of the strangeness of Christianity and the humiliation of following Christ.
In this passage in Matthew's gospel Peter takes Jesus aside after he has foretold his crucifixion and rebukes him telling him that there is no way this can happen. God wouldn't let something bad happen to someone good, right? In response, Jesus calls Peter Satan. The cross is how we come close to Christ. This perverse symbol of human depravity is what cancels our depravity. We cannot remove the cross and its shame. We cannot remove the real blood and the real death that stands at the center of our confession.
I think that along with excitement and dread this passage ought also to induce in us a great sense of gratitude. The way of Christ is the cross; the way of the Christ-follower is the cross. True. But by God's mercy the work of the cross is counted toward us, the righteousness of Christ is imputed as our own.
Human Toby reads this passage and thinks, "No freaking way. I cannot do this. I cannot lay down my life like this, I can't shoulder a cross everyday. I can't give up my life everyday." And God in his mercy says, "You're right. That's the point." Jesus does what we could never do. Our Older Brother laid down his life everyday before he laid down his life on the Day. Our older brother shouldered a cross everyday before he shouldered the Cross. And we, in the great transfer, have been crucified with him and we no longer live. And our life in this flesh is lived by faith, including the faith to believe that we are both to take up a cross everyday and that our Lord has given us an easy yoke and a light burden.
I am so grateful for the cross.
Most everyone knows that Washington was elected unanimously to the office of the president for the first, last, and certainly only time in our nation's history. He did not campaign, deliver rousing speeches, kiss babies, or try to reach out to Joe Sixpack. He was just like, "Look, who else would it be?" and people were like, "Yeah, you right." There were no challengers and there were no parties.
Washington saw himself as above the idea of a party politician and actively hoped that the partisan spirit would not take root in the United States. Ha! Politicians love arguing and politicians also love being able to blame some other people if stuff goes bad. Parties were bound to happen. None of us can conceive of politics without parties for a reason. The alternative is hard to imagine. Also, you need people to disagree about stuff. You need people to say, "Government is bad! Businesses never do anything shadily or excessively." And you need other people to say, "Government is good. Government can solve all of our problems. You like roads, dontcha?" Both people are idiots but they provide a nice balance to each other.
Anyway, Washington's high-mindedness aside, parties were always going to happen, but Washington was probably pretty p-o'd that the first real division was within his own cabinet. On the federalist team we have Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, who was like, "Remember how we needed a national army to win the war? Maybe we need a strong federal government." On the republican side we have Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, who was like, "We must be debt free as a nation, but taxes levied to pay those debts are evil. Oh, and the states pretty much have things covered, you snooty northerners." These guys hated each other. They each funded newspapers to sling mud at the other side. The dude Jefferson hired even castigated Washington for owning slaves. Thomas Jefferson, plantation owner of Monticello, baby daddy to Sally Hemings, berating another man for owning slaves. Pot, kettle, etc. It was weird stuff.
Washington's own affections were more of a Federalist nature. The war had impressed upon him the need for a strong federal government, without which the unity and cohesion needed to win another war would be severely lacking. Washington was not a big government Democrat, by today's standards, just convinced that the nation needed an identity as a nation and not merely a conglomerate of states geographically related.
Given this bent, much of Washington's implicit and explicit support was directed toward Hamilton. This, of course, earned him the ire of Jefferson and Madison and some of the other republicans. Which Washington hated. People could badmouth him in that purple prose eighteenth century style and he just had to take it. It frustrated him to no end, but he held the dignity of his office as of more value than scoring political points. Though he vented his exasperation in private, he never let it spill over to the public. He was a good man.
By now in our country's history we are all familiar with the role of the president: you promise a bunch of stuff on the campaign trail (maybe you mean it, maybe you don't, frankly it is hard to tell), get elected and realize how hard it is to get stuff done and change things, become a punching bag for whichever side is now out of power, get really gray hair, get one or two things accomplished that because of the weight of partisan opposition suck anyway, have people in your own party disown you for this or that (usually because you don't realize how totally great they are and how much you should be listening to them), convince yourself to run for a second term, usually win it, and then do mostly nothing while contenders in your own party and across the aisle ready themselves for the next election. Then you write a book, smile for some photographs, and pretend like you still give a tinker's damn about this country (sometimes you might even paint pictures of yourself in the bathtub).
But when Washington took office no one had really figured any of this out yet. He was a trailblazer in the role, there was hardly even a historic precedent to look to within the previous 1500 years. Cromwell's Commonwealth? Not a great example.
From my readings of these chapters, and from the perspective of a biographer who is very compassionate towards the challenges Washington faced, it seems like he was competent. When he was a general he didn't win many battles but he won the war by holding things together. The same thing sort of played out in his presidency. He had a number of strategic victories and perhaps amplified the constitutional intent for the role of President, but for the most part he left personally frustrated and with a deeply divided nation.
As to the adjective competent, though, I don't want this to seem as if I am damning with faint praise. Competent is fantastic for a president. It has been awhile since we have gone there as a nation. Maybe it is from going to business school when the book Good to Great was all the rage, but the transformative, charismatic leader usually sets up his successor to fail. Washington refused to become a demigod. Though his ultimate goal was to rise above the fray he was forced to get his hands dirty.
Perhaps his ultimate accomplishment was serving as an emotional ballast in a heady time for revolutions. The French revolution bathed Paris in blood, but there was no similar bloodletting for the United States in the wake of victory. Washington's calm demeanor, however carefully crafted, saved what could have been the almost universal tendency to replace one sort of tyranny with another. Washington restrained the worst impulse of revolutionaries, both in his role as general and as president, and I don't think we can underestimate what an amazing accomplishment that is in light of what could have been.
Some additional thoughts on his presidency to come. Until then, have a wonderful holiday weekend.
The other night I was watching the kids while Clara worked. Ellie was taking a nap and Owen and I were outside playing. Owen is a worker, just like his mom. We spent a chunk of time in the front yard where he was mowing with his lawnmower. He chastised me for not mowing, but in my defense I had mowed the night before with my lawnmower. Though I don't mind looking the fool for my kids, pushing a lawnmower around my front yard without turning on the engine to amuse my son is just a bit too far. After mowing to his satisfaction he went through our yard and picked up all of the sticks to put in a wood chipper (he hands them to me and I make a buzzing noise). From there we moved to the backyard.
"Will you rake with me daddy?"
"Sure, buddy, let me go check on your sister first."
I went upstairs and Ellie was awake so I grabbed her and headed back down. When we got to the backyard Owen was working with his rake up close to the house in a spot that sees no sun throughout the year and therefore has no grass. He was raking the loose dirt into a pile and had grabbed his wagon and shovel out of the shed. I had watched him maneuver it out from the upstairs window. He then set about scooping up the pile he had raked and putting the dirt into his wagon. Ellie and I sat in the yard to watch.
He steered the wagon over to the swingset and began unloading the dirt beneath the slide area. It was 95 degrees that day, and humid. The sun was beating down and his entire head was soaked with sweat. After he stopped getting enough dirt in a shovel scoop to justify the use of the tool he reached with both hands and grabbed loose dirt and tossed it into his new pile.
Of all the innocuous moments of parenting, moments that bleed into one another and are quickly forgotten, there was something about this one that I wanted to cling to. This image of my nearly three-year old son glistening with sweat in the early summer sun grabbing fistfuls of dirt and throwing them under a swingset. The sun on his face, the dirt accumulating all over his body, sticking fast to the sweat. The simple, dexterous movements. The confidence in his abilities. The total focus on a (for an outsider) completely silly task. My son's whole body and mind were devoted to this act. He could not have been more content anywhere in the world. He craned his fingers into every nook and cranny of that wagon until he was satisfied that he had scraped free everything he could. Then he turned the wagon on its side and dumped what was left into his pile.
I didn't have the heart to tell him he could have saved himself some time and a mess if he had only started with that move. He'll figure stuff like that out when he gets older. But I am in no rush. I could watch my son empty dirt from a wagon for hours.
Last week I wrote a review of James KA Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom, which you can read here. I mentioned toward the end of my review that I feel like this is a book that is going to stick with me, that even though I felt Smith overstated his point his point was still well worth making. In my reading in the past week or so there have been a couple of other things that have made me think about the importance of liturgy and worship. The first, N.T. Wright's thoughts on the subject which are outlined briefly in his recent tome on the Apostle Paul. The second, a novel I am reading about a young Hasidic Jew.
Wright's work is something I plan on engaging with often and at length as I work my way through its 1800 or so pages, but for my purpose in this post I want to draw out some of his thoughts on "worldview" that are germane to Smith's work. Smith balks, somewhat, at the language of worldview altogether, since such talk privileges, as he sees it, the life of the mind over a more embodied, holistic experience. Wright is not entirely comfortable with the term "worldview" himself, but caveats noted he says in reference to the worldview of Paul,
"the life of the mind was itself elevated by Paul from a secondary social activity, for those with the leisure to muse and ponder life's tricky questions, to a primary socio-cultural activity for all the Messiah's people. The interesting question of whether one thinks oneself into a new way of acting or acts oneself into a new way of thinking will, I suspect, continue to tease those who try to answer it (not least because it is of course reflexive: should you answer it by thinking of by acting?). . . Worldview creates a context for theology, but theology is necessary to sustain the worldview." (PFG 27)
Wright is driving toward something here that is tricky when evaluating a work like Smith's. While I agree with Smith's assessment that humans are by nature worshiping beings and that this is an inextricable part of our humanity, the call to discipleship within Christianity demands that we engage fully with our minds as well as our bodies and our affections. Which is merely to say that both men are right. At certain times and in certain contexts (such as Smith's Reformed world) it is right to emphasize the centrality of the body and of desire to Christian worship. At other times and in other contexts, for example a believer who only reads the Bible devotionally or refuses to deal with any "theology" cuz that's bad and divisive, it is helpful to be reminded that we are instructed to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
As to the second provoking text, this week I have been reading (and loving) Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, the story of a young Ladover Jew in Brooklyn who is blessed with a gift for painting. Perhaps I will write more about the book at some point, but for the subject at hand what stands out to me is the way the faith of the Ladovers invades every portion of their day. They pray at morning, noon, and night. They sing Psalms, they study Torah, they recite Scripture. Their days are infused throughout with reminders of their core identity: Jewish followers of the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Even their dress and hairstyle are formed in such a way as to set them apart.
I found myself reading Asher's father asking him every night to say his Krias Shema ("Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one") and longing for that level of devotion, that simplicity of faith standing at the center of one's identity. Theological and cultural differences aside, I find it extremely admirable. Moreover, kids raised in this tradition will know that their faith marks them out from the world at large, that to follow God is a costly and precious thing. They will grow up with Scripture grafted into their heart.
I can hear some people already casting doubt, claiming that such a system would only breed rebellion. My response: at least children raised under such a system would know what they are rebelling against. Given the Biblical illiteracy of even church-going Christians today, whose kids by and large walk away from the faith in rebellion anyway, I wonder if those kids have any idea of the depth of the tradition they are casting aside. With my own kids, I want them to see the depth of their faith tradition, to taste of its riches when they are in my home, and know that to follow Christ is no mean pursuit. And they would feel what it is to love God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
I knew in some distant, ill-used corner of my brain that there was a time lapse between the end of the Revolutionary War and Washington's election as the first president of the United States. But I had forgotten that it was nearly six years, roughly the amount of time Obama has been president. Which is to say, quite a while. Six years ago I was child-free, roaming the deserts of west Texas and New Mexico, just starting to read books again. In other words, a not insignificant period of time.
There was a lot of speculation about what role Washington would take. The Constitutional convention that paved the way for the presidency had not yet taken place and there were many who were eager to crown Washington as a sort of new king for the newly-minted nation. If the temptation to receive endless accolades and humbly accept the role of monarch was ever entertained by Washington we have no record of the fact. By all appearances, both public and private, Washington was eager to lay down the mantle of national figurehead and retire to managing Mount Vernon and live out his days in peace and prosperity.
The historical figure Washington very intentionally called to mind was the Roman general Cincinnatus. In ancient Rome, with the fledgling nation under attack by the Aequi, an emergency counsel named Cincinnatus temporary dictator of Rome. He rose to the challenge, soundly defeated the Aequi, and then relinquished the powers he was given the very next day. He held them for less than two weeks.
Washington's reticence to claim power and willingness to retreat to a rural life exemplified the ideals of sacrifice for the nation without a view to personal gain. I mentioned in the last post the degree to which Washington crafted and manipulated his public image and there is no doubt that some of that was at play here. However, with one eye on his public perception, it is nevertheless true that Washington feared a monarchy and aristocracy arising in infant America and was hellbent on resisting the human impulse to crown a king.
While content to play a marginal role in national affairs, it is safe to say that Washington could have had no conception of the ultimate role he would be asked to play as the father of his nation.
It should be noted before I get into the body of this post that there is today no more beautiful novelist in the world than Marilynne Robinson. I have read Gilead four times and Home three times and I am anticipating Lila with great eagerness. I have read all of her books of nonfiction as well and have always found her to be an engaging thinker. A solid part of me is convinced that she couldn't possibly be as simplistic in her responses as it is conveyed in the interview she gave to Religion News Service. I hope she finds occasion to elaborate at some point in the near future. For now I am giving her the benefit of the doubt that she just may not interview very well or that her responses were injudiciously truncated.
You can read the interview I will be referring to here.
There are a few things I would take issue with in her responses, not least of which is her glib dismissal of any notion of historic Christian ethical teaching. The interviewer asks her two questions about gay marriage, the first asking if people with differing opinions can coexist on the issue with the second asking if the size of the population opposed to gay marriage will shrivel to insignificance in the near future. While her answer to the second question is maddening for its deliberate anachronism and lack of cultural awareness, the first is almost more frustrating for its arrogance.
In answer to the first question, Robinson replies:
Sometimes I wonder about the authenticity of the controversies themselves. My own denomination (the United Church of Christ), has blessed same-sex relationships and married them as quickly as it became legal in my state. It has been a process that’s gone on for a long time. Nobody gives it a thought, so when you read in the newspaper that there are people calling down brimstone, it’s startling. In time it will become an old issue for the culture that simply will not bring out this kind of thing anymore.
My people are so awesome and progressive on this issue that it is difficult for me to even conceive that there are still knuckle-dragging troglodytes out there somewhere who might disagree. First of all, come on. Second of all, there are fewer than one million people in the United Church of Christ so I am not sure in what world the views of its membership are taken to be representative for Christendom in general. Thirdly, it is not like Iowa started blessing same sex marriages in the 1820s. The state Supreme Court ruled on that in two-thousand-freaking-nine. I have pairs of socks much older than same sex marriage in Iowa, yet Robinson acts as if she can conceive of the state in no other way. Fourthly, are we to believe that the church that dove headfirst into blessing gay marriages before the ink was dry on the Supreme Court decision really didn't "giv[e] it a thought"? The mix of arrogance and head-in-the-sandiveness of this comment is incommensurate with the best American novelist.
Her answer to the second question, about whether all of the knuckle-dragging troglodytes will eventually shut up and die, repeats the tired assertion that since we mix fabric in our clothing and for the most part refuse to stone witches and kill children who disobey their parents then the whole Levitical teaching on sexual ethics must be tossed aside as well. Again, I have written before how frustrating it is to have the Bible's teaching on the subject, as well as traditional marriage supporters knuckle-dragging troglodytes' arguments in favor of traditional marriage the ancient and oppressive tool of the patriarchy, reduced to the phantom contemporary preacher of Leviticus, but here we are yet again, with America's greatest living novelist.
Robinson doubles down on pro-gay marriage boilerplate by saying that since Jesus never explicitly condemned homosexuals and dudes were into dudes back then that maybe we should just be like Jesus and never teach or say anything controversial. This is ridiculous, again, on any number of levels. First, Jesus also didn't say anything about the government's role in ending poverty, but Robinson seems to find a definite argument in favor of government assistance in his teachings. Second, Jesus was preaching to mostly Jews in Judea. In other words, he was speaking to people who from birth had imbibed the Old Testament sexual ethic. This is not to say that homosexuality did not exist in first century Judea, just to say that there was no question about where Yahweh stood on the issue. Paul, writing to different people in different contexts, has to be more explicit in dealing with the issue and for those who have spent any time reading Paul (like presumably Marilynne Robinson has) this should not be a controversial point to make.
In the very next question, one asking about Hobby Lobby and issues of religious freedom, Robinson continues to parrot the arguments of a commenter on The Daily Kos. Here is Robinson's response:
That seems to me like an artificial problem. I wish I could go to the Supreme Court every time I saw somebody trying to cut food stamps, or pre-K, or any of these other things. These people that are so attentive to babies that don’t exist yet, and so negligent of babies that need help. It’s part of the narrowing of the culture, so that only certain things are considered to be religious controversies. It’s a religious controversy, to me, that we would think of cutting back on help for the poor. Especially after our financiers have crashed the economy.
Again, Robinson seems to be all over the place here. 1) The religious freedom of business owners is artificial; 2) Conservative Christians are somehow negligent of babies that need help; 3) Cutting back on aid to the poor is a religious controversy; 4) Financiers, who were all Republicans, right?, wrecked the economy, which is very relevant to a question about the HCA's contraceptive mandate. That is one busy paragraph.
All of these statements are strange in their own way. What makes forcing someone to go against their conscience because Big Brother says so an artificial issue? Who in the world does more for impoverished children than Christian organizations? I hate the false antithesis between concern over state-sponsored baby-murdering and concern for babies once they are born. Maybe the same state that thinks it is within the moral pale to kill babies in utero is not the best judge of how to care for these children post utero? I don't know, just thinking and typing here. Finally, she knows the guy who owns Hobby Lobby was not a Wall Street financier, right?
I really don't know what else to say other than I am disappointed that this is the best we could get from Robinson. I already knew she would disagree with me on any number of things and that is fine. I don't expect to ideologically agree with all of the novelists I read, or any of them for that matter. I simply expected someone with Robinson's prodigious mind and research in historic Christianity to have a more nuanced view of these issues than some bastard child of a Paul Krugman and Maureen Down column.
None of this changes the fact of Robinson's greatness as a novelist, but for someone who delights in being contrarian (rehabilitating Calvin for goodness' sake) it is unfortunate that she doesn't even seem to have considered both sides to important questions for our culture. In essay after essay in The Death of Adam she asks her reader to reconsider previously held notions about Darwin and Calvin and the Puritans, and it is this type of intellectual curiosity that drew me to Robinson as a thinker. Here, though, she is monochromatic, unoriginal, and seems to have closed off thought altogether.
